I would like my computer to beep - using built-in PC speaker (not speakers connected to soundcard, I use headphones most of the time) when receiving new email in Thunderbird, but I cannot get it to work. After some searching I found Mailbox Alert extension, which can execute command (/usr/bin/beep) when a new email is received, but somehow this does not work - there is no "beep" generated, even though /usr/bin/beep works just fine on its own. This is pretty frustrating since I can get an arbitrary command executed - including mplayer playing a file or opening an application - but /usr/bin/beep does nothing from the Mailbox Alert extension.

Does anyone has any insight into this, or can somebody at least try this to see if it works for them?

Well, I have just recompiled my kernel to add PC Speaker support and emerged beep only to find I seem to have built my PC without a speaker!

Anyway, some thoughts:

How about running Thunderbird from a shell to see if there are any error messages posted when the command is called?

Do you need to run the command in a shell (/bin/sh -c /usr/bin/beep) rather than directly?

I just tried Thunderbird in the shell, and although I haven't got a speaker konsole popped up the 'Bell in Session "Shell" ' which suggests it is signalling properly when testing the alert feature. However, if I execute the command directly in konsole, it doesn't.....

Sorry I can't be more helpful

edit - fixed formatting and spelling!

Last edited by paulj on Thu Nov 29, 2012 12:33 pm; edited 1 time in total

Actually, your suggestion has been very helpful !!! Strangely, beeping when thunderbird is started from a terminal, but not otherwise. I do not understand why, maybe related to XFCE desktop I am using.

Still, a great find, for now I made a workaround where I call "/usr/bin/xterm -e /usr/bin/beep", which works. Your suggestion of calling a shell "/bin/sh -c /usr/bin/beep" does not work.

So things work now, but I would still like to understand what exactly is going on.